Monday, January 3, 2011

Mappy Monday: Hoffman Land in Woodland Township

The first land owned by Henry and Jacob Hoffman in Illinois was in Derinda Township in southern Jo Daviess County, the northwest corner of the state. Jacob later moved just south to Woodland Township, Carroll County. I wrote earlier about Jacob and the likelihood that he died between 1900 and 1903 when his grandsons, Henry and Jacob Benz, filed paperwork on his land. The Hoffman's brother-in-law, Jacob Blumhardt, husband of their sister Margaret, bought neighboring land in part mortgaged to Henry. When Blumhardt disappeared, Henry eventually got it through a sheriff's sale. I like a pair of landownership maps available from books published in 1893 when the Hoffmans were alive and later in 1908 after their deaths. Jacob Hoffman's land is then owned by Henry Benz, et al. Blumhardt's land that went to Henry Hoffman is then owned by David Burke who was in the process of buying it when Henry died. Also, David is the person with whom widower Jacob Hoffman was enumerated in the 1900 census. The maps tie all these facts together in a nice visual package. The maps were located in libraries, but these digital versions are courtesy of Ancestry.com. Click on any of the maps to see larger versions.